The real reason for downloading the February 2004 issure of Cites & Insights is Walt Crawford’s discussion of technology. In one section, Crawford summarizes and comments on the PC versus Mac articles in Macworld and PC Magazine. As Crawford states, there is more to PC versus Mac than speed.

When I saw my first www.apple-history.com 128k Mac in the Harvard Book Store in 1984, I had to have it. I was fascinated by the iconic interface and it didn’t matter that there was so little software or that it cost over $2400. I have always been of the opinion that the platform of choice should be that which runs the software that you need to use and that is pleasant to use. I got great pleasure from using my 128K Mac—which I still have, though it is boxed up to hand on to my grandchildren or a museum. I was so excited about this new system that I enrolled in Harvard’s Summer Session in 1984, where we huddled around rows of 128K Macs in the basement of the Science Center and wrote programs in the Motorola 68000 language. It was painful, as we worked with two floppy disks and struggled through countless system crashes as we learned to program this new graphical joy. I have remained a Mac user, though our SJSU SLIS program does include some software that runs only on a Windows system. For that requirement, I use Virtual PC with Windows XP, which I run on a Macintosh G4 Cube. I am particularly delighted with the Mac OS X operating system, code named “Panther,” combined with a Unix undercore: I can run Unix commands and Open Source or liberally licensed software.

Apple has been going after the PC market for some time. Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of Macintosh. Apple has posted the original televised advertisement on their site: 20 Years of Macintosh 1984-2004. Many bloggers, including F. J. de Kermadek in The power of the Mac community [Jan. 23, 2004] are talking about the Mac community, and Glenn Fleishman’s Apple’s groundbreaking computer marks 20th anniversary article in the Business & Technology section of the The Seattle Times gives a brief overview of Macintosh history. In 2003, O’Reilly published Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual by David Pogue.

You are asking what this has to do with libraries? Well, Crawford brought up the subject and touched a button. It has not been easy to use a Macintosh in a PC world, and libraries, at least from my perspective, are a PC world. It bothers me that LIS schools insist on forcing future librarians to use Windows-only software and that I am made to feel second-class by using a Macintosh. You say I am unreasonable? You say that LIS schools must standardize and that libraries must standardize, as there is no money for diversity in technology. You say that librarians probably use Windows systems at home, so less money needs to be invested in training them. I concede you are right, but it still bothers me. [January 29 note: I am being a bit cranky and oversimplifying here. It isn’t only LIS schools, but that is what I have to address now.]

If you are like me and want to continue using a Macintosh in library school, you need to be aware of what just about everyone else expects. At SJSU you need Virtual PC for Mac, which was recently purchased by Microsoft. This actually comes in handy for more than running Keeboo or Inmagic software: You can use the environment for accessing Web sites that code their sites for Windows users runing Internet Explorer, or use it for testing your own Web site. A major hurdle is learning the Windows operating system and dealing with the plethora of security patches. You will need a lot more memory, and VPC may still be slow compared to running in the Mac OS native environment: This is common for a virtual environment. Check out Microsoft’s compatibility center, where you will learn tips for insuring that your document displays the same on a Windows system. You must learn which fonts will size correctly on both operating systems, so Mactopia: Office X: From Windows to Mac and back is also a must read.

I want to thank Debbie Faires at SJSU, who did jump through hoops in extra programming to make sure the SJSU SLIS site works for Macintosh browsers too.